


a cordial invitation

by nowrunalong



Category: Set It Up (2018)
Genre: Family, Fish out of Water, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:06:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25499554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nowrunalong/pseuds/nowrunalong
Summary: It's definitely not a yacht.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 12
Collections: Juletide 2020





	a cordial invitation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ashling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashling/gifts).



“This isn’t a yacht,” Kirsten says, looking at the dinky fish-stinking vessel she’d just been instructed to board. A horrible breeze coming in off the water bites at her eardrums. “You told me you bought a yacht.” 

Her brother hands her a fluorescent orange coat. “You’re going to want to put this on.”

“What is this, Ethan?”

“It’s a windbreaker.”

Kirsten glares at him. “Not the coat. This! You call this a boat? Your invitation said _boat ride_ and _lobster dinner_. Is this some sort of prank?”

“Come on, K. I haven’t seen you since Christmas. Abby’s been trying to get you to visit forever but she says your assistant always emails her back with—quote-unquote—‘Kirsten will be unable to attend due to scheduling conflicts.’ I thought I’d try appealing to your taste for finer things. Lo and behold, here you finally are.” Ethan grins.

“First of all, I told her to tell Abby to go suck on a lemon. Evidently I need a new assistant who can more accurately transcribe my replies. Secondly, what the hell is going on with you? Do you live here now? I thought you were in Connecticut.”

“We moved to Maine in January, which you’d already know if you read your own emails.”

“I receive two hundred emails a day,” Kirsten says, ninety-five percent unapologetic. “My assistant filters out all non-essential messages.”

“Kirsten!” a familiar voice trills from behind her. “We are so thankful you could make it!”

Kirsten rolls her eyes once, and then pastes on an exaggeratedly friendly smile as she turns around. “Abigail! It is _so_ good to see you!”

Ethan’s fiancée is at least six inches shorter than Kirsten, twice as muscular, and disturbingly fast. Kirsten is enveloped in an enthusiastic hug before she can make any move to the contrary. When she’s finally free from Abby’s iron-armed embrace, her smile has been flattened like a coffee cup under a New York taxicab. She takes a second to recompose it.

“You’ll want that windbreaker where we’re going,” Abby says, gesturing to the coat Kirsten has gingerly tucked under her right arm. “You look like you’re all dressed up for a dinner cruise.”

“And you look—” Kirsten wants to say something about Abby’s fraying flannel shirt or her poofy, uncombed hair, but she catches Ethan’s eye “—so _prepared_ ,” she finishes, with false brightness. She punctuates her sentence with another too-wide smile.

“Let’s get going, ladies,” Ethan says. “We’ll have plenty of time for catching up on the boat.”

He leans over as Abby passes so that she can plant a kiss on his mouth before swinging her legs down into the fishing boat.

If Kirsten boards this eyesore now, she’ll be trapped. She pulls Ethan aside.

“This was a terrible idea,” she tells him bluntly. “And you still haven’t even told me why we’re here.”

“Abby grew up in Maine. Her parents are lobster fishermen. She wanted to move back to be closer to them. They’ve been showing me the ropes since we got settled in.”

“There’s no way Mom and Dad are on board with this,” Kirsten says.

“Pun intended?” Ethan asks, grinning. Kirsten looks daggers at him, and he sobers up. “They’re not really,” he says. “But I was a lawyer for six years. I have savings. And there’s nothing to say I can’t still practise law in Maine, on a more part-time basis. I really like doing this, K. And I love Abby. We want to start a family here. I’m asking you to get over the Christmas incident. Please? For me?” Ethan makes a praying gesture with his hands. “I miss my sis.”

“Incident,” Kirsten repeats slowly, feigning ignorance. “I don’t think I remember any ‘incident’. Oh! Or are you referring to when your fiancée gave Mom the exact same gift I’d gotten her, so that when Mom opened mine on Christmas day, it was ‘redundant’ and ‘uninspired’?”

“We both know you’d have brought the best gift if you’d chosen it yourself instead of getting your assistant to order something from a catalogue.”

Kirsten had indeed tasked her then-assistent with choosing a gift for her mother. Harper had been called upon to find Kirsten a new assistant immediately after brunch.

“Your boat is made of wood,” Kirsten says, rather than acknowledging that Ethan is right.

“She’s forty years old and still going strong. She’s safe as houses.”

“Please don’t tell me I have to catch my own lobster for dinner.”

“I would never tell you that _before_ you got on board,” Ethan says, smiling mischievously. “I know you too well.” And then he heads down the dock and joins Abby in the boat.

Against her better judgment, Kirsten pulls the hideous windbreaker over her Valentino blouse and follows him.

She had worked with a single-minded focus to get to where she is now. Every other aspect of her life had been put on hold, tinny muzak drowning out their pleas for attention. It wasn’t that she didn't care, but rather that she couldn’t afford distractions during an arduous climb with so many unstable footholds. One wrong move and she’d have plummeted to obscurity.

Kirsten had made all the right moves. She’s living at the top now.

Perhaps, she thinks, leaning over the side of the wooden fishing boat as Ethan guides it out of the harbour, Abby to his left with her fisherman pants and her infuriatingly genuine smile, it’s time to stop leaving her family on hold.


End file.
